Introduction to People Management

This document provides an introduction to people management, discussing the contemporary issues faced by line management, the skills and behaviors needed to be an effective people manager, and how HR processes support and underpin management. The document includes a case study of Tesco, a British retail company.

Introduction to People
Management

Table of Contents
Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................1
What contemporary issues face line management..................................................................1
What skills, knowledge and behaviors needed to be an effective people manager................3
What HR process support and underpin management...........................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
People management is a variant of human resource management. Various HR activities like
job training, accession of talent, motivation and listening sessions, mentoring, argument
resolution and encouragement all comes in people management. The important role of people
management is to create a better work environment for all the employees and organization. The
individual professional in HR management who specialized in this particular area work with
employees during the complete life cycle of company, which includes hiring the right people to
assisting them through the process to make them reach their full potential plus keep the
employees satisfied for their respective roles (Knies, Leisink and Van De Schoot, 2020). As John
Kohout, a business development VP, said at Hudson Wealth Management, “Becoming stagnant
in any career is a risk everyone faces, and with people management, you’re taking steps to
prevent that before it even sets in so you can help someone find fulfillment in a greater goal,”.
When a powerful people management is developed the HR gets their team motivated, productive
and satisfied. In the report of Tesco below we will see the contemporary issues that face line
management go through when it comes to people management and the knowledge, skills
required for an effective performance management. Tesco is a British based internationalized
retail company which sells groceries and merchandise.
Main Body
What contemporary issues face line management
When any one make progress in careers he/she naturally has to reach the next step of
management. This progression comes with rewards as well as many challenges too. The team of
management professionals needs people with knowledge, skills and understanding to manage
people effectively. These professionals, with the help of HR manage the work and performance
of employee, although because of COVID 19 situation these tasks are negatively affected, adding
up to other issues faced by them. The following are issues management go through:
Effective communication with employees:It is one of the biggest challenge for any
management professional to bring the different people together in organization by motivating
them timely using their communication skills. The manager needs to develop this skill of listing
and communicating effectively to the people for the success of team (Power, 2021). According to
the report of 2020 in UK this has been reported that because of less interdepartmental
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communication the stress and tension among employees increased. The HR professionals at
Tesco work to reduce and remove this problem through transparent and effective
communication. Every individual has his own way of communication because of which the same
ways of commuting cannot be used for every employee (Drucker, 2019). To solve this query
people manager use different techniques and tests to understand the personality type of
individual in each team. Through these tests they can find out the strengths and weaknesses of
team members results in taking necessary steps of communicating with each one of them by
recognizing their personality type.
Hiring: The next issue is hiring right person for required vacancy. What needed is the
people with right experience and skills that the manger wants but it’s not necessary that all those
candidates suitable for profile are also completely suitable to join the team also (Hoffman and
Tadelis, 2021). This is the challenge for manager, as a good manager will be able to seek out the
ones with good skill and the ones with cultural fits. The employees that are hired at Tesco by the
HRM are those right people that are analyzed and then selected for job.
Confronting performance issues: Problems related with performance are forever the
biggest concern of any manger. In this competitive business atmosphere keeping the
performance at high performance and maintaining it necessary. And if some one fails in
maintaining this can easily be stay behind and other competitor can gets ahead of business.
Managing conflicts in team: When great collaborators come together with different
creativity and comfortableness that is a big achievement but is not possible always. One of the
reason is when a conflicts arises among the colleagues or just between the two people although it
is felt by all team members. So if the conflicts does not get resolved it can quickly affect
productive outcomes and morale of team. This kind of situation can leads to decrease in the best
performance of company’s employees. The task of manager is to resolve the conflicts at its
earlier stage before it becomes the big issue.
Retraining of employees: In today’s advance world the skills are becoming more and more
specialized and particularly advanced. So the talented employees needs to get retrain with time
and Tesco keep this in mind with giving regular training to employees to keep them updated with
the latest advancement and technology (Cappelli, 2020). To do so the managers ensure that the
talented staff gets the support and encourage them to learn new skills which also results in
creating the clear path for their progression and can happily do their role.
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Letting go of employees: This part of manager’s job is one of the hardest part which is not
always comfortable for them to do. And there is no as such easy way to do this job, because of
this the managers are provided with special training from HR. This thing will make it sure that
the manager performed all right protocols, processes, conditions, policies in order to avoid
negative consequences.
What skills, knowledge and behaviors needed to be an effective people manager
People management is required for all areas of business. The responsibility of the manager
is to think and make sure about all possible aspect of the members of team members. To do this
effectively and in efficient manner Tesco has taken the step to divide and give each and every
department to different individuals who can manage their respective work effectively (Stewart
and Brown, 2019). The various departments are all the categories of groceries and merchandiser
like bakery, etc. To make people work in their respective department with skills they have
manger needs to enhance the mental strength of people and give motivation and build team unity.
For all this people manger needs to have knowledge, skills and behaviors, lets take these one by
one.
Behaviors of good people
Being the best example
People has tendency to easily observe and catch what all is happening around them. So
for this the great manager must behave in the manner he wants his team members to behave in
(Jyoti, 2019). Things come under good behavior are being punctual, keeping positive attitude
specially in challenging time and supporting the team as a good team leader should do.
Building trust and relationship
A good manager is the one who try and understand that people are more then the time
they spend in office, they have a life outside also. So the good always try to know when a person
of his staff does not perform well at work. The manager should find out the reason because of
which the employee is suffering with and understands the other aspect of life also. The
globalized company like Tesco has understanding to deal with such kind of situations. As the
company is managing the various departments’ chain they have a big team of employees to pay
attention to (Lan and et. al., 2019). Tesco is helpful to employees while managing this situation
like tackling grievances, managing skills, and creating plus maintaining positive work
environment. Knowing and understanding staff well to get to the root of issue is beneficial for
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everyone in business (Fried 2021). When some one works with different type of people he needs
to be flexible and encourage people also to help out in particular situation.
Work ethics
People working with Tesco have each level of responsibilities which goes from
administrators and customer assistant to directors, these all faces different types of decisions.
People feels more secure when the working environment is transparent and honest. The
employees are people only and they feels comfortable if the rules are same for each employee.
Skills needed for good manager
Good listener
One can be a good people manager if he/she is also a good listener as it is the most
important skill for the same. If manager listens attentively to the people of his/her team this helps
in understanding each and every employee better (Shahaj and et. al., 2019). Manager should not
listen just to reply but to understand the point of view of employees which results in enhancing
the performance of both company and employees.
Muti task management
Tesco is an organization serving numerous retail products in it’s various chains in
different countries. This proves that the HR management and people management at Tesco
should be multi tasking. The HR is required to work with vision also with ability to manage time
in best possible way and achieve the goals which keeps on updating with time.
Communication
When it comes to manage a big team the HR management needs to maintain a good tone
of voice and require to be clear with what they are trying to communicate to the employees. They
do not have to be arrogant and rude while communicating, however keeping a positive body
language and talking in a good manner is important for organization. The use of disrespectful
tone leads to an argument with more people getting involved.
Ability to resolve conflict
Tesco is a big organization and when it comes to manage the large group of employees it
has done a nice job. The greater the organization is more are the chances of employees getting in
clash and a good manager should have the ability to resolve it (Agarwal and et. al., 2021).
Solving the conflict and creating a positive environment is very important as it increase the
productiveness of employees and as a result of productivity of company also increases.
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What HR process support and underpin management
The various ways through which process of human resource management get support are
discussed below:
Fresh approach
For keeping the company updated with advanced management technique there has to be
changes and upgradation in performance management (Daft, 2021). The implementation of these
changes needs to be done carefully and reported on time. For example shift in feedback
frequency, technology advancement and etc. The complete effectiveness of performance
management is achieved with help of technology also, like taking the support of latest
technology can create a better working situation and performance of management improves.
Performance management model
The company must determine the whole performance management system to make
decisions like promotions of employees and other such decisions (Serafini, Wood and Szamosi,
2020). The various actions which are done by HR is performance planning and create a clear
vision between all the managers and also among employees. The process of performance
management is not possible without the support of human resource management. HRM plays
very important aspect in keeping record of performance and managing it effectively.
Comprehensive plan
Comprehensive plan gives the steps to mangers to apply the changes accordingly in the
company. HR plays an important role in making effective performance management. The
performance of company as whole increases when the HR gives the various policies to mange
the overall work of the company. The performance management of Tesco that all the goals of
organization are fulfilled. Through the effective performance management the collective
approach of HR to the other management system supported each other effectively.
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CONCLUSION
From this report it can be concluded that people management comes with different issues.
To resolve all of them management has to be effective with communication and being aware of
all current situations good or bad. Employees should be motivated timely, so they stay alert
about the collective goal of organization and theirs. When the people management and
performance management are done properly as both depend on each other to get the better
outcomes from employees. With effective performance management and people management the
challenges can be faced easily and growth of company is achieved which also maintain the
consistency of work among the employees of company.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Agarwal, R. and et. al., 2021. People Management Practices that Underpin Lean Management
Outcomes. Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 22(2), pp.75-94.
Cappelli, P., 2020. Stop Overengineering People Management. Harvard Business Review, 98(5),
pp.56-63.
Daft, R.L., 2021. Management. Cengage Learning.
Drucker, P.F., 2019. Management cases. Harper Collins.
Hoffman, M. and Tadelis, S., 2021. People management skills, employee attrition, and manager
rewards: An empirical analysis. Journal of Political Economy, 129(1), pp.000-000.
Jyoti, K., 2019. Green HRM–people management commitment to environmental sustainability.
In proceedings of 10th international conference on digital strategies for organizational
success.
Knies, E., Leisink, P. and Van De Schoot, R., 2020. People management: developing and testing
a measurement scale. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 31(6),
pp.705-737.
Lan, N.S.R. and et. al., 2019. Implementing simple algorithms to improve glucose and lipid
management in people with diabetes and acute coronary syndrome. Diabetic
Medicine, 36(12), pp.1643-1651.
Power, A., 2021. Property Before People: The management of twentieth-century council
housing. Routledge.
Serafini, G.O., Wood, G. and Szamosi, L.T., 2020. People management after state socialism: A
literature review and research agenda. Human Resource Management Review, 30(4),
p.100741.
Shahaj, O. and et. al., 2019. Supporting self-management for people with hypertension: a meta-
review of quantitative and qualitative systematic reviews. Journal of hypertension, 37(2),
pp.264-279.
Stewart, G.L. and Brown, K.G., 2019. Human resource management. John Wiley & Sons.
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